Billy Martin

Alfred Manuel "Billy" Martin, Jr. (May 16, 1928 – December 25, 1989) was an MLB second baseman from 1950 to 1961, playing most of his career with the New York Yankees. He began his first managing job in 1969 with the Minnesota Twins. He would be a manager in Major League Baseball until 1988, and would lead the Yankees to consecutive American League Pennants in 1976 and 1977, and the World Series in 1977. He would serve as Yankees manager on five different terms.

Billy Martin proved what a powerful strategic tool paranoia is. He believed that everyone was against him. And so he spent every waking moment figuring out how imaginary enemies could be defeated in their nefarious plots. And sometimes he not only created strategies to defend against things that would never be done against him, but he realized that those attacks were in themselves novel and he would then try those attacks that he had already dreamed up a defense for. That's why he was so wonderful at suicide bunts and double steals and any way that you could humiliate or psychologically defeat the other team, he was sure that's how the world reacted to him. He was sure the world hated him. And so he turned that really raw, frightened paranoia into wonderful strategic intelligence.[1]